Capstone Reflection

Dr. Albert Mehrabian found that communication is made of 55% body

language, 38% tone, and 7% of the words we use. Because of this, the words
I use and the way I use them is vital in writing. Through my journey in first
year writing, I learned about five main Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) of
writing skills that are necessary to compose complex pieces in various
mediums. With the aid of course content, I learned the purpose of each SLOs
and practiced them regularly.

Rhetorical knowledge uses audience and context awareness to create

text that is appropriate for any situation. This is learned by analyzing various
types of texts in different genres, to find ways to improve my writing style.
One of the first assignments of the semester was to analyze Martin Luther
King Jrs Letter from Birmingham Jail. This assignment allowed me to see
how King used his situation of being incarcerated for pushing his argument,
as pathos to evoke the consciousness of the audience. I implement this idea
in my activism project by using my experiences of discrimination as a center
point of my research. The purpose of the website was to persuade the reader
to not be prejudice towards immigrants, and to inform my audience with
multiple accredited articles that support my argument. I used context and
audience awareness throughout many of my other forums, studios, and
projects, implementing the rhetoric knowledge Ive learned throughout the
course. In the future, I will use rhetorical knowledge in my everyday life by
analyzing what messages the author intended me to see.

To properly understand how authors use their rhetorical knowledge, I

needed to learn how to critically read. This involves being able to pinpoint
ideas from information and texts, which I demonstrated in my critical inquiry
project, while selecting appropriate sources for my research. The sources I
picked needed to coincide with my groups issue of racial discrimination in
rural towns. While evaluating whether my articles were credible and had
solid evidence, I also had to pick the correct sources that would support my
purpose effectively. Reading critically is a skill that I use with any reading
that is assigned to me or any research I am required to do in my academic
career. This skill will help me gain the knowledge I search for from other
writers, while becoming a more adept writer myself.

Writing a successful paper is not a singular step, but instead a process

of conceptualizing, developing, and finalizing. Some of these steps will have
to be repeated once revision is made. For example, my first paper in this
course was to analyze a paper I wrote, then write an essay on my critical
readings for it. The Composing Process SLO was used to produce an
adequate final paper. Using my rhetorical knowledge and critical reading
skills, I took notes and made drafts of how I wanted to present my findings.
Once I had a draft that I had revised and edited, I had peers revise my work
to give outside insight to further my revisions. The final product was a
polished piece that was heavily revised by my peers, my professor, and
myself. Throughout, I had to change and sometimes completely throw out
ideas, so my message came across as effectively as possible. This process
was done extensively for this project, repeating the steps multiple times. In
other papers, forum posts, and any other writing I produced for the course, I
preformed the same composing process in smaller doses, depending on the
importance of the assignment.

Each genre and type of literature has guidelines to how to style,

organize, and document the writing produced. The only way to become
comfortable with a medium is to have experience with it. For the activism
project and final portfolio, I had to create a website to house all my work. A
good predecessor for these assignments was studio 5 which was centered
around digital composition. This studio aimed to teach us of different
marketing strategies and ways visual formatting attracts the audience. With
the information learned in studio 5, I formatted my websites to be as
digestible as possible for the viewer. Another aspect of knowing how to use a
genre is the grammatical and structure I use in my writing. With my
rhetorical knowledge of knowing my audience, I selected the correct
discourse community for my medium.

Using the SLOs, I have a wide knowledge on how to effectively

produce a piece that targets my audience, with appropriate information and
language use. Appling this knowledge uses critical reflection, which is the
ability to demonstrate the feedback and information gained from a process,
in writing. My portfolio was an example of this reflective ability; taking a wide
selection of all the assignments and work done in this course and reflecting
on how they connect to the SLOs. This act of informational communication is
also being shown by this essay. I have summarized the course content and
applied it to each of the Student Learning Outcomes aimed to be gained by
first-year writing students. Overall the SLOs are a useful tool that help
brainstorm and finalize successful pieces of writing that practice audience
awareness and structure. I harnessed these skills throughout the semester
and will continue to use them in any form of writing I use in the future.